Surface-dwellers know the Kraken Society as a cloak-and-dagger organization that brokers the information they glean through spying, theft, blackmail, and intimidation to gain influence. Once their agents – known as krakenar – have been covertly placed, they use the same methods (plus strategic assassination) to disrupt organizations and topple regimes. Their agents then slide into the power vacuum and “end the threat” that the Kraken Society created in the first place.

What few know is that the Kraken Society is only one slithering tentacle of a much larger – and far older – organization. This organization lacks any true name, but among those in the know it is often referred to as the Tentacles of the Deep.

These tentacles extend from Slarkethrel – the Kraken of the Purple Rocks, King of the Trackless Depths, Consort of the Bitch Queen, the Master of the Veil – and they include the:

• Kraken Society, the so-called “Thieves’ Guild of the North,” most of the members of which (except for those indoctrinated in its inner mysteries) do not realize their service to the kraken.
• Heralds of the Deep, an ancient cult in the Purple Rocks which worships the kraken.
• Forgotten Empire of Ascarle, a vast underwater demesne (once larger than the entire Savage Frontier) ruled by the kraken.
• Assassins of the Purple Veil, a highly trained order that was once part of the Kraken Society but which has since become independent (although its services may still be called upon by those within the Society’s inner circles).

A BRIEF HISTORY

According to the lore enshrined by the Heralds of the Deep, Slarkethrel is more than forty thousand years old, either pre-dating Toril or being born in the instant of its creation (depending on which version of the tale you’re looking at). This would make Slarkethrel one of the preternatural kraken – one of those legendary entities which served the gods before the birth of the mortal races and are said to have ascended to a higher plane of existence.

The inner mysteries of the Kraken Society describe a vast kraken empire which once ruled the seas before they were betrayed and driven into the sanctuaries of the abyssal rifts. In these tales, the King of the Trackless Depths is destined to regain its lost hegemony, and the Society’s members will be wrapped in the loving embrace of its tentacles when that day comes.

None of this is true, however (although the Kraken of the Purple Rocks does yearn for a divine ascension to follow in the footsteps of his “brethren”). The reality is that Slarkethrel was born, according to the Dale Reckoning, in the second century, in the Year of the Kraken (151 DR). It spent its youth exploring the deepest depths of the ocean, its wanderlust slowly transforming into an obsession with the shipwrecks and ruins it found from surface species. It craved the knowledge – and the power given by that knowledge – that it found there.

Slarkethrel eventually stumbled across the sunken city of Ascarle. This ancient elven city was sacked by dark elves and cast into the sea during an ancient ice age. For many long years the kraken studied the troves of lore which he found there and used what he learned to subjugate nearby underwater tribes. Ascarle became the capital of a cosmopolitan empire, with merrow, nereid, mermen, wereshark nobles, whale castes, kapoacinths, koalinths, malenti, morkoths, water weirds, and others.

When he had learned all that he could from Ascarle, he knew that the only way to expand his knowledge and power would be to extend his tentacles into the surface world.

Ascarle lay in the waters just north of an archipelago known as the Purple Rocks, and Slarkethrel began the next phase of his great work by infiltrating the small villages which dotted those desolate islands and creating a cult which would worship him as a dark god of the sea. (He began by rescuing shipwrecked sailors, indoctrinating them, and then returning them “miraculously” to their people.) This cult eventually grew until it completely dominated the Purple Rocks.

From this base of slavish devotion, Slarkethrel used similar techniques to establish the Kraken Society in small settlements along the northern Sword Coast. Harper investigations have concluded that the earliest such agents may have become active in the mid-12^th century (and may have contributed to fostering rivalries which prevented the isolated city-states of the Sword Coast from solidifying into a Northern Empire that might have interfered with Slarkethrel’s long-term plans), but the Society began rapidly expanding in the early 14^th century, pushing inland and establishing major presences in towns like Yartar and Triboar (the former of which became the Society’s center of operations) in addition to expanding their presence in the big coastal cities like Luskan, Neverwinter, Waterdeep, and Baldur’s Gate.

The success of this expansion was likely due to Slarkethrel, under the influence of Vestress, the rogue mind flayer who served as his lieutenant and the Regent of Ascarle, embracing a decentralized structure for the Society. Rather than attempting to control everything himself, Slarkethrel empowered regional lieutenants to lead local operations. (This organization was mirrored under the waves through the appointment of Ascarlian satraps.)

These mortal servitors were limited to much more short-term thinking, but this had the advantage of swift growth.

In the mid-14^th century, Slarkethrel became allied with and later the consort of Umberlee, the Bitch Queen. With the rapid growth of the Kraken Society, the vast domain of the Ascarlian Empire, and the support of this new patroness, the kraken was making a major push towards becoming a true demigod and achieving his dream of divinity.

In the late 14^th century, however, the Kraken Society’s operations were massively disrupted by the Harpers after an attempt to expand Slarkethrel’s empire into the surface world through an invasion of Ruathym failed. The krakenar networks were completely wiped out in many places, including Yartar, and were forced into a much lower profile even in those places where they survived.

The Spellplague then wreaked havoc with Slarkethrel’s undersea empire. The exact nature of the catastrophe (or catastrophes) remains unclear to the Harpers and other surface-dwellers, but it appears the sunken city of Ascarle was temporarily “lost again” or somehow cut off from the rest of the Ascarlian Empire, thus robbing the kraken of its major center of power. (This may have had something to do with the mysterious krakengates — immense teleportation gates once used by ancient kraken, four of which, in Ascarle, the Whalebones, 60 miles south of Ice Peak, and 150 miles west of Leilon, had been reclaimed by Slarkethrel.) In the aftermath, significant undersea clans and peoples separated from the empire, either asserting their independence or becoming tributaries to other major powers under the waves.

Some believed that the King of the Trackless Depths had, in fact, been destroyed (or lost with its capital city). Slarkethrel, however, held onto a small demesne around the Purple Rocks and eventually reasserted its dominion over Ascarle. In the late 1470s, the dormant cells of the Kraken Society were abruptly reawakened, signaling that Slarkethrel’s tentacles were once again groping their way ashore. There have also been a number of minor wars beneath the waves, with Ascarlian troops bringing several of its wayward satrapies to heel.

Go to Part 2: Tentacles of the Deep

Forgotten Realms: Arveiaturace, the White Wyrm Storm King’s Remix – Part 3B: The Giant Lairs Storm King’s Remix – Part 3D: Concept Revelations